Often when I check into a hotel, I am surprised when the check-in hotelier pleasantly welcomes me and thanks me for my loyalty.
“I am loyal to you?” I wonder. Well, I suppose I have stayed here before, but that is likely because this is where what I am attending — a conference, usually — is held.
Now, I know many travelers ardently follow loyalty programs and stay at favorite brands that see their loyalty points increased. They use the points they gather, and all is well with the world, apart from perhaps some owners complaining they get a raw deal.
It is just that I am loyal to nothing. I am pondering if this is true, and I really think it is. I am not, even though I am sure I have been seduced by marketing, deals and convenience.
Such programs offer a whole lot more now — the ability to use points for concerts, magazine subscriptions and car hire and linked credit cards offering yet more points.
I have hotel loyalty-program numbers and cards for any number of hotel firms; it is just that I do not remember what the numbers are, or, indeed, where I might have written them down, and I cannot remember where the cards are, or even if I received them.
A look in my wallet during writing this revealed exactly zero loyalty cards, that is, if one ignores my annual membership pass to the nature reserves of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.
All this comes to mind as I read that High Street coffee, breakfast and lunch chain Pret a Manger is to cease its scheme in which loyal customers pay £30 ($39) per month to be eligible for up to five free coffees a day.
Specialty coffee has swept the United Kingdom over the last 20 or 30 years, whereas before then it would have been instant and only instant, and probably in a chipped mug.
Some Pret customers are angry.
The firm itself provided a classic piece of corporate nothingness when it replied, as reported by the BBC, “the new subscription model reinforces a stronger value message which should help Pret appeal to a wider audience.”
Pret a Manger's new scheme will offer five half-price coffees per day for a monthly membership of £10, which might seem to a cynic exactly the same program just with savings enacted in it for the company.
The world of business is full, no doubt, of schemes that proved disastrous, a good idea at the time, a popular idea at the time but one that over time became onerous.
When I lived in New York City, I was for 20 years a member of the New York Road Runners (now, that’s loyalty!), the wonderful organization that puts on road and cross-country races every week, arranging the blue-ribbon New York City Marathon on the first Sunday of November and brings running and health into communities, schools and such.
It came up with a scheme that offered lifetime membership.
It was in the late-1990s, even maybe in 2000, and I believe the membership was $1,000 and gave free entrance to every race, apart from the marathon itself and one other key event.
That charge was a lot of money then, as it is now, but take-up was notable.
To pay that amount showed loyalty, but I am not sure if it is loyalty to running or to the NYRR. The two were inseparable to most members, including myself.
I know of a few runners who still have this lifetime membership, even though there were polite attempts by the NYRR to buy them out of them.
The airlines are another case.
Wrapped into that loyalty are benefits I can see, but despite all the flights I take I have not ever bought enough to get airline lounge membership, which would be the one thing I would like.
Airlines asked for our loyalty in the aftermath of the pandemic, but now airfares are eye-watering.
Every hotelier is saying that experience is the new selling point, but it is harder to get a new experience if one stays with the same hotel company and in the same hotel brand, I would have thought.
The idea that such programs are simple also does not compute with me.
I find it simpler to choose a hotel or other travel component at any one point, rather than doing the same via a loyalty program.
I am sure there are many like me and many who are not.
Are they about price, savings, convenience and choice? About feeling part of something and valued?
It must be a mistake to believe convenience is loyalty.
I will keep an eye on things and see if one day I get it, or if I remain a curmudgeon.
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